<?D    14    043 


V'-D-HOWELLS 


MY  YEAR  IN  A  LOG  CABIN 


BY 


W.    D.    HO  WELLS 


ILLUSTRATED 


N  E  W     YORK 
HARPER   &    BROTHERS   PUBLISHERS 


Harper's  "Black  and  White"  Series. 

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MY  YEAR  IN  A  LOG  CABIN.    By 

William  Dean  Howells. 
EVENING  DRESS.    A  Farce.     By 

William  Dean  Howells. 
THE    WORK    OF    WASHINGTON 

IRVING.     By   Charles   Dudley 

Warner. 
EDWIN    BOOTH.      By    Laurence 

Hutton. 
THE   DECISION   OF  THE   COURT. 

A  Comedy.     By  Brander  Mat 
thews. 
PHILLIPS    BROOKS.       By    Rev. 

Arthur  Brooks,  D.D. 
GEORGK  WILLIAM  CURTIS.     By 

John  White  Chadwick. 
THE  UNEXPECTED   GUESTS.    A 

Farce.       By     William     Dean 

Howells. 
SLAVERY  ANDTHKSLAVETKADE 

IN    AFRICA.       By    Henry    M. 

Stanley. 
WHITTIER:  NOTES  OF  HIS  LIFE 

AND  OF  HIS  FRIENDSHIPS.    By 

Annie  Fields. 


THE     RIVALS.        By     Francois 

Coj.pee. 
THK     JAPANESE     BRIDE.       By 

Naomi  Tamura. 
GILES    COREY,    YEOMAN.      Bv 

Mary  E.  Wilkina. 
COFFEE    AND    REPARTEE.      By 

John  Kendrick  Bangs. 
JAMES  RUSSELL   LOWELL.     An 

Address.     By  George  William 

Curtis. 
SEEN   FROM  THE  SADDLE.      By 

Isa  Carrington  Cabell. 
A    FAMILY    CANOE  TRIP.      By 

Florence  Watters  Snedeker. 
A  LITTLE  Swiss  SOJOURN.     By 

William  Dean  Howells. 
A    LETTER    OF    INTRODUCTION, 

A    Farce.     By   William  Dean 

Howells. 
IN    THE    VESTIBULE     LIMITED. 

By  Brander  Matthews. 
THE  ALBANY  DEPOT.     A  Farce 
.    Bj?  William  Dean  Howella. 


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Copyright,  1893,  by  W.  D.  HOWELLS. 


PRINTED     IN     THE     UNITED     STATES     OF    AMERICA 
F-0 


MY   YEAR   IN   A   LOG-CABIN 

A  BIT  OF  AUTOBIOGRAPHY 

I 

IN  the  fall  of  the  year  1850  my  father 
removed  with  his  family  from  the  city  ot 

D :,  where  we   had    been   living,  to  a 

property  on  the  Little  Miami  River,  to 
take  charge  of  a  saw-mill  and  grist-mill, 
and  superintend  their  never-accomplished 
transformation  *  into  paper-mills.  The 
property  belonged  to  his  brothers — physi 
cians  and  druggists — who  were  to  follow 
later,  when  they  had  disposed  of  their 
business  in  town.  My  father  left  a  disas 
trous  newspaper  enterprise  behind  him 
when  he  came  out  to  apply  his  mechan 
ical  taste  and  his  knowledge  of  farming 
to  the  care  of  their  place.  Early  in  the 
century  his  parents  had  brought  him  to 
Ohio  from  Wales,  and  his  boyhood  was 


393809 


passe'd  in  the  new  country,  where  pioneer 
customs  and  traditions  were  still  rife,  and 
for  him  it  was  like  renewing  the  wild  ro 
mance  of  those  days  to  take  up  once 
more  the  life  in  a  log-cabin  interrupted 
by  forty  years'  sojourn  in  matter-of-fact 
dwellings  of  frame  and  brick. 

He  had  a  passion  for  nature  as  tender 
and  genuine  and  as  deeply  moralized  as 
that  of  the  English  poets,  by  whom  it  had 
been  nourished ;  and  he  taught  us  chil 
dren  all  that  he  felt  for  the  woods  and 
fields  and  open  skies  ;  all  our  walks  had 
led  into  them  and  under  them.  It  was 
the  fond  dream  of  his  boys  to  realize  the 
trials  and  privations  which  he  had  painted 
for  them  in  such  rosy  hues,  and  even  if 
the  only  clap  -  boarded  dwelling  on  the 
property  had  not  been  occupied  by  the 
miller,  we  should  have  disdained  it  for 
the  log-cabin  in  which  we  took  up  our 
home  till  we  could  build  a  new  house. 

Our  cabin  stood  close  upon  the  road, 
but  behind  it  broadened  a  cornfield  of 
eighty  acres.  They  still  built  log-cabins 
for  dwellings  in  that  region  forty  years 
ago,  but  ours  must  have  been  nearly  half 


a  century  old  when  we  went  into  it.  It 
had  been  recently  vacated  by  an  old  Vir 
ginian  couple,  who  had  long  occupied  it, 
and  we  decided  that  it  needed  some  re 
pairs  to  make  it  habitable  even  for  a 
family  inured  to  hardship  by  dauntless 
imaginations,  and  accustomed  to  retro 
spective  discomforts  of  every  kind. 

So  before  we  all  came  out  of  it  a  dep 
utation  of  adventurers  put  it  in  what  rude 
order  they  could.  They  glazed  the  nar 
row  windows,  they  relaid  the  rotten  floor, 
they  touched  (too  sketch ily,  as  it  after 
wards  appeared)  the  broken  roof,  and 
they  papered  the  walls  of  the  ground- 
floor  rooms.  Perhaps  it  was  my  father's 
love  of  literature  which  inspired  him  to 
choose  newspapers  for  this  purpose ;  at 
any  rate,  he  did  so,  and  the  effect,  as  I 
remember  it,  was  not  without  its  decora 
tive  qualities. 

He  had  used  a  barrel  of  papers  bought 
at  the  nearest  post-office,  where  they  had 
been  refused  by  the  persons  to  whom 
they  had  been  experimentally  sent  by  the 
publisher,  and  the  whole  first  page  was 
taken  up  by  a  story,  which  broke  off  in 


the  middle  of  a  sentence  at  the  foot  of 
the  last  column,  and  tantalized  us  forever 
with  fruitless  conjecture  as  to  the  fate  of 
the  hero  and  heroine.  I  really  suppose 
that  a  cheap  wall-paper  could  have  been 
got  for  the  same  money,  though  it  might 
not  have  seemed  so  economical. 

I  am  not  sure  that  the  use  of  the  news 
papers  was  not  a  tributary  reminiscence 
of  my  father's  pioneer  life;  I  cannot  re 
member  that  it  excited  any  comment  in 
the  neighbors,  who  were  frank  with  their 
opinions  of  everything  else  we  did.  But 
it  does  not  greatly  matter ;  the  newspa 
pers  hid  the  walls  and  the  stains  with 
which  our  old  Virginian  predecessor,  who 
had  the  habit  of  chewing  tobacco  in  bed, 
had  ineffaceably  streaked  the  plastering 
near  the  head  of  his  couch. 

The  cabin,  rude  as  it  was,  was  not  with 
out  its  sophistications,  its  concessions  to 
the  spirit  of  modern  luxury.  The  logs  it 
was  built  of  had  not  been  left  rounded,  as 
they  grew,  but  had  been  squared  in  a 
saw-mill,  and  the  crevices  between  them 
had  not  been  chinked  with  moss  and 
daubed  with  clay  in  the  true  pioneer 


fashion,  but  had  been  neatly  plastered 
with  mortar,  and  the  chimney,  instead  of 
being  a  structure  of  clay-covered  sticks, 
was  solidly  laid  in  courses  of  stone. 

Within,  however,  it  was  all  that  could 
be  asked  for  by  the  most  romantic  of  pi 
oneer  families.  It  was  six  feet  wide  and 
a  yard  deep,  its  cavernous  maw  would 
easily  swallow  a  back-log  eighteen  inches 
through,  and  we  piled  in  front  the  sticks 
of  hickory  cord-wood  as  high  as  we  liked. 
We  made  a  perfect  trial  of  it  when  we 
came  out  to  put  the  cabin  in  readiness 
for  the  family,  and  when  the  hickory  had 
dropped  into  a  mass  of  tinkling,  snapping, 
bristling  embers  we  laid  our  rashers  of 
bacon  and  our  slices  of  steak  upon  them, 
and  tasted  with  the  appetite  of  tired  youth 
the  flavors  of  the  camp  and  the  wildwood 
in  the  captured  juices. 

I  suppose  it  took  a  day  or  two  to  put 
the  improvements  which  I  have  men 
tioned  upon  the  cabin,  but  I  am  not  cer 
tain.  At  night  we  laid  our  mattresses  on 
the  sweet  new  oak  plank  of  the  floor,  and 
slept  hard — in  every  sense.  Once  I  re 
member  waking,  and  seeing  the  man  who 


was  always  the  youngest  of  his  boys  sit 
ting  upright  on  his  bed. 

"  What  are  you  doing  ?"  I  asked. 

"  Oh,  resting !"  he  answered  ;  and  that 
gave  us  one  of  the  Heaven-blessed  laughs 
with  which  we  could  blow  away  almost 
any  cloud  of  care  or  pain. 


II 


IN  due  time  the  whole  family  took  up 
its  abode  in  the  cabin.  The  household 
furniture  had  been  brought  out  and  be 
stowed  in  its  scanty  space,  the  bookcase 
had  been  set  up,  and  the  unbound  books 
packed  in  easily  accessible  barrels. 

There  yet  remained  some  of  our  pos 
sessions  to  follow,  chief  of  which  was  the 
cow;  for  in  those  simple  days  people 
kept  cows  in  town,  and  it  fell  to  me  to 
help  my  father  drive  her  out  to  her  future 
home.  We  got  on  famously,  talking  of 
the  way-side  things  so  beautiful  in  the 
beautiful  autumnal  day,  all  panoplied  in 
the  savage  splendor  of  its  painted  leaves, 
and  of  the  poems  and  histories  so  dear  to 
the  boy  who  limped  barefooted  by  his 
father's  side,  with  his  eye  on  the  cow  and 
his  mind  on  Cervantes  and  Shakespeare, 
on— 

"  The  glory  that  was  Greece, 

_And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome." 

2 


But  the  cow  was  very  slow — far  slower 
than  the  boy's  thoughts — and  it  had  fallen 
night  and  was  already  thick  dark  when 
we  had  made  the  twelve  miles,  and  stood 
under  the  white-limbed  phantasmal  syca 
mores  /beside  the  tail-race  of  the  grist 
mill,  and  questioned  how  we  should  get 
across  with  our  charge.  We  did  not 
know  how  deep  the  water  was,  but  we 
knew  it  was  very  cold,  and  we  would 
rather  not  wade  it. 

The  only  thing  to  do  seemed  to  be  for 
one  of  us  to  run  up  under  those  sycamores 
to  the  saw-mill,  cross  the  head-race  there, 
and  come  back  to  receive  the  cow  on  the 
other  side  of  the  tail-race.  But  the  boy 
could  not  bring  himself  either  to  go  or 
stay.  I  do  not  know  just  how  it  is  with 
a  boy's  world  now,  but  at  that  time  it  was 
a  very  dangerous  world.  It  was  full  of 
ghosts,  for  one  thing,  and  it  abounded  in 
Indians  on  the  war-path,  and  amateurs  of 
kidnapping  and  murder  of  all  sorts. 

The  kind-hearted  father  urged,  but  he 
would  not  compel.  You  cannot  well  use 
force  with  a  boy  with  whom  you  have 
been  talking  literature  and  philosophy 


for  half  a  day.  We  could  see  the  lights 
in  the  cabin  cheerfully  twinkling,  and  we 
shouted  to  those  within,  but  no  one  heard 
us.  We  called  and  called  in  vain.  Noth 
ing  but  the  cold  rush  of  the  tail-race,  the 
dry  rustle  of  the  sycamore  leaves,  and 
the  homesick  lowing  of  the  cow  replied. 

We  determined  to  drive  her  across,  and 
pursue  her  with  sticks  and  stones  through 
the  darkness  beyond,  and  then  run  at  the 
top  of  our  speed  to  the  saw-mill,  and  get 
back  to  take  her  in  custody  again.  We 
carried  out  our  part  of  the  plan  perfectly, 
but  the  cow  had  apparently  not  entered 
into  it  with  intelligence  or  sympathy. 

When  we  reached  the  tail-race  again 
she  was  nowhere  to  be  found,  and  no 
appeals  of  "  Boss  "  or  "  Suky  "  or  "  Subose  " 
availed.  She  must  have  instantly  turned 
again,  and  retraced,  in  the  darkness  which 
s'eemed  to  have  swallowed  her  up,  the 
weary  steps  of  the  day,  for  she  was  found 
in  her  old  home  in  town  the  next  morn 
ing.  At  any  rate,  she  had  abandoned  the 
father  to  the  conversation  of  his  son,  for 
the  time  being,  and  the  son  had  nothing 
to  say. 


Ill 


I  DO  not  remember  now  just  how  it 
was  that  we  came  by  the  different  "ani 
mals  of  the  horse  kind,"  as  my  father 
humorously  called  them,  which  we  housed 
in  an  old  log -stable  not  far  from  our 
cabin.  They  must  have  been  a  temporary 
supply  until  a  team  worthy  our  new  sky- 
blue  wagon  could  be  found. 

One  of  them  was  a  colossal  sorrel,  in 
exorably  hide-bound,  whose  barrel,  as  I 
believe  the  horsemen  call  the  body, 
showed  every  hoop  upon  it.  He  had  a 
feeble,  foolish  whimper  of  a  voice,  and  we 
nicknamed  him  "  Baby. "  His  companion 
was  a  dun  mare,  who  had  what  my  father 
at  once  called  an  italic  foot,  in  recog 
nition  of  the  emphatic  slant  at  which 
she  carried  it  when  upon  her  unwilling 
travels. 

Then  there  was  a  small,  self-opinionated 
gray  pony,  which,  I  think,  came  from  one 


of  the  saw-mUl  hands,  and  which  was  of 
no  service  conjecturable  after  this  lapse 
of  time.  We  boys  rode  him  barebacked, 
and  he  used  to  draw  a  buggy,  which  he 
finally  ran  away  with.  I  suppose  we 
found  him  useful  in  the  representation  of 
some  of  the  Indian  fights  which  we  were 
always  dramatizing,  and  I  dare  say  he 
may  have  served  our  turn  as  an  Arab 
charger,  when  the  Moors  of  Granada 
made  one  of  their  sallies  upon  the  camp 
of  the  Spaniards,  and  discharged  their 
javelins  into  it — their  javelins  were  the 
long,  admirably  straight  and  slender  iron- 
weeds  that  grew  by  the  river.  This  menag 
erie  was  constantly  breaking  bounds  and 
wandering  ofl ;  and  I  believe  that  it  was 
chiefly  employed  in  hunting  itself  up,  its 
different  members  taking  turns  in  remain 
ing  in  the  pasture  or  stable,  to  be  ridden 
after  those  that  had  strayed  into  the 
woods. 

The  origin  of  a  large  and  eloquent  flock 
of  geese  is  lost  in  an  equal  obscurity.  I 
recall  their  possession  simply  as  an  ac 
complished  fact,  and  I  associate  their 
desolate  cries  with  the  windy  dark  of 


12 


rainy  November  nights,  so  that  they  must 
at  least  have  come  into  our  hands  after 
the  horses.  They  were  fenced  into  a  clayey 
area  next  the  cabin  for  safe  -  keeping, 
where,  perpetually  waddling  about  in  a 
majestic  disoccupation,  they  patted  the 
damp  ground  down  to  the  hardness  and 
smoothness  of  a  brick  yard.  Throughout 
the  day  they  conversed  tranquilly  to 
gether,  but  by  night  they  woke,  goose 
after  goose,  to  send  forth  a  long  clarion 
alarum,  blending  in  a  general  concert 
at  last,  to  assure  one  another  of  their 
safety. 

We  must  have  intended  to  pluck  them 
in  the  spring,  but  it  never  came  to  that. 
They  stole  their  nests  early  in  March, 
and  entered  upon  the  nurture  of  their 
young  before  we  could  prevent  it ;  and  it 
would  then  have  been  barbarous  to  pluck 
these  mothers  of  families.  Some  of  their 
nests  we  found,  notably  one  under  the 
smoke-house,  where  the  adventurous  boy 
who  discovered  it  was  attacked  in  the 
dark  by  its  owner  and  bitten  in  the  nose, 
to  the  natural  gratification  of  those  who 
had  urged  him  to  the  enterprise.  But  he 


brought  away  some  of  the  eggs,  and  we 
had  them  fried,  and  I  know  nothing  that 
conveys  a  vivider  idea  of  inexhaustible 
abundance  than  a  fried  goose-egg. 


IV 


THE  geese  were  not  much  profit — they 
had  to  be  sold,  finally,  for  little  or  noth 
ing;  but  their  soft  and  woolly  goslings 
were  a  great  pleasure  to  all  the  chil 
dren,  who  were  plunged  in  grief  when 
the  miller's  sow  made  a  foray  among 
them. 

This  was  a  fierce  and  predatory  ani 
mal  that  was  in  some  sort  a  neighbor 
hood  terror.  She  made  her  lair  in  the 
reeds  by  the  river-side,  breaking  out  a 
perfect  circle,  which  she  kept  against  all 
comers,  especially  boys,  till  her  young 
were  born ;  then  she  returned  to  her  sty 
near  the  miller's  house,  convenient  to  the 
young  turkeys,  chickens,  and  goslings, 
leading  forth  her  brood  in  a  savage  defi 
ance  which  no  one  dared  to  front,  except 
the  miller,  who  did  so  with  a  shot-gun  at 
times,  when  her  depredations  became  out 
rageous.  Wherever  she  appeared  the 


children  ran  screaming,  and  the  boldest 
boy  was  glad  of  the  top  rail  of  a  fence. 

She  was,  in  fact,  a  wild  beast ;  but  our 
own  pigs  were  very  social  creatures.  We 
had  got  some  of  them,  I  believe,  from  the 
old  Virginians  whom  we  had  succeeded 
in  the  cabin,  and  these  kept,  as  far  as  they 
could,  the  domestic  habits  in  which  that 
affectionate  couple  had  indulged  them. 
They  would  willingly  have  shared  our 
fireside  with  us,  humble  as  it  was,  and 
being  repelled,  they  took  up  their  quarters 
on  cold  nights  at  the  warm  base  of  the 
chimney  without,  where  we  could  hear 
them,  as  long  as  we  kept  awake,  disput 
ing  the  places  next  to  the  stones. 

All  this  was  horrible  to  my  mother, 
whose  housewifely  instincts  were  per 
petually  offended  by  the  rude  conditions 
of  our  life,  and  who  justly  regarded  it  as 
a  return  to  a  state  which,  if  poetic,  was 
also  not  far  from  barbaric.  But  chil 
dren,  and  more  particularly  boys,  take 
every  natural  thing  as  naturally  as  sav 
ages,  and  we  never  thought  our  pigs  were 
other  than  amusing.  In  that  country 
pigs  were  called  to  their  feed  with  long 


i6 


cries  of  "  Pig,  pig,  pooee,  poe-e-e !"  but 
ours  were  taught  to  come  at  a  whistle, 
and,  on  hearing  it,  would  single  them 
selves  out  of  the  neighbors'  pigs,  and 
come  rushing  from  all  quarters  to  the 
scattered  corn  with  an  intelligence  we 
were  proud  of. 


As  long  as  the  fall  weather  lasted,  and 
well  through  the  mild  winter  of  that 
latitude,  our  chief  recreation,  where  all 
our  novel  duties  were  delightful,  was 
hunting  with  the  long  smooth-bore  shot 
gun  which  had  descended  laterally  from 
one  of  our  uncles,  and  supplied  the  needs 
of  the  whole  family  of  boys  in  the  chase. 
Never  less  than  two  of  us  went  out  with 
it  at  once,  and  generally  there  were  three. 
This  enabled  us  to  beat  up  the  game  over 
a  wide  extent  of  country,  and  while  the 
eldest  did  the  shooting,  left  the  other  to 
rush  upon  him  as  soon  as  he  fired  with 
tumultuous  cries  of  "  Did  you  hit  it?  Did 
you  hit  it?"  Usually  he  had  not  hit  it, 
though  now  and  then  our  murderous 
young  blood  was  stirred  by  the  death 
agonies  of  some  of  the  poor  creatures 
whose  destruction  boys  exult  in. 

We  fell  upon  the  wounded   squirrels 


i8 


which  we  brought  down  on  rare  occa 
sions,  and  put  them  to  death  with  what  I 
must  now  call  a  sickening  ferocity.  If 
sometimes  the  fool  dog,  the  weak-mind 
ed  Newfoundland  pup  we  were  rearing, 
rushed  upon  the  game  first,  and  the 
squirrel  avenged  his  death  upon  the  dog's 
nose,  that  was  pure  gain,  and  the  squirrel 
had  the  applause  of  all  his  other  enemies. 
Yet  we  were  none  of  us  cruel ;  we  never 
wantonly  killed  things  that  could  not  be 
eaten ;  we  should  have  thought  it  sac 
rilege  to  shoot  a  robin  or  a  turtle-dove, 
but  we  were  willing  to  be  amused,  and 
these  were  the  chances  of  war. 

The  woods  were  full  of  squirrels,  which 
especially  abounded  in  the  wood-pastures, 
as  we  called  the  lovely  dells  where  the 
greater  part  of  the  timber  was  thinned 
out  to  let  the  cattle  range  and  graze. 
They  were  of  all  sorts — gray,  and  black, 
and  even  big  red  fox-squirrels,  a  variety 
I  now  suppose  extinct.  When  the  spring 
opened  we  hunted  them  in  the  poplar 
woods,  whither  they  resorted  in  countless 
numbers  for  the  sweetness  in  the  cups  of 
the  tulip-tree  blossoms. 


I  recall  with  a  thrill  one  memorable 
morning  in  such  woods — early,  after  an 
overnight  rain,  when  the  vistas  hung  full 
of  a  delicate  mist  that  the  sun  pierced  to 
kindle  a  million  fires  in  the  drops  still 
pendulous  from  leaf  and  twig.  I  can 
smell  the  tulip  blossoms  and  the  odor  of 
the  tree-bark  yet,  and  the  fresh,  strong 
fragrance  of  the  leafy  mould  under  my 
bare  feet ;  and  I  can  hear  the  rush  of  the 
squirrels  on  the  bark  of  the  trunks,  or 
the  swish  of  their  long,  plunging  leaps 
from  bough  to  bough  in  the  air-tops.  I 
hope  we  came  away  without  any  of  them. 

The  only  one  I  ever  killed  was  a  black 
squirrel,  which  fell  from  aloft  and  lodged 
near  the  first  crotch  of  a  tall  elm.  The 
younger  brother,  who  followed  me  as  I 
followed  my  elder,  climbed  up  to  get  the 
squirrel,  but  when  he  mounted  into  the 
crotch  he  found  himself  with  his  back 
tight  against  the  main  branch,  and  unable 
either  to  go  up  or  come  down.  It  was  a 
terrible  moment,  which  we  deplored  with 
many  tears  and  vain  cries  for  help. 

It  was  no  longer  a  question  of  getting 
the  dead  squirrel,  but  the  live  boy  to  the 


ground.  It  appeared  to  me  that  to  make 
a  rope  fast  to  the  limb,  and  then  have 
him  slip  down,  hand  over  hand,  was  the 
best  way ;  only,  we  had  no  rope,  and  I 
could  not  have  got  it  to  him  if  we  had. 
I  proposed  going  for  help,  but  my  brother 
would  not  consent  to  be  left  alone ;  and, 
in  fact,  I  could  not  bear  the  thought  of 
leaving  him  perched  up  there,  however 
securely,  fifty  feet  from  the  earth.  I  might 
have  climbed  up  and  pull  him  out,  but 
we  decided  that  this  would  only  be  swifter 
destruction. 

I  really  cannot  tell  how  he  contrived  to 
free  himself,  or  why  he  is  not  in  that  tree 
to  this  day.  The  squirrel  is. 

In  a  region  where  the  cornfields  and 
wheat -fields  were  often  fifty  and  sixty 
acres  in  extent  there  was  a  plenty  of 
quail,  but  I  remember  again  but  one  vic 
tim  to  my  gun.  We  set  figure-four  traps 
to  catch  them  ;  but  they  were  shrewder 
arithmeticians  than  we,  and  solved  these 
problems  without  harm  to  themselves. 
After  they  began  to  mate,  and  the  air 
was  full  of  their  soft,  amorous  whistling, 
we  searched  to  find  their  nests,  and  had 


better  luck,  though  we  were  forbidden  to 
rob  the  nests  when  we  found  them ;  and  in 
June,  when  the  pretty  little  mother  strut 
ted  across  the  lanes  at  the  head  of  her 
tiny  brood,  we  had  to  content  ourselves 
with  the  near  spectacle  of  her  cunning 
counterfeit  of  disability  at  sight  of  us, 
fluttering  and  tumbling  in  the  dust  till 
her  chicks  could  hide  themselves.  We 
had  read  of  that  trick,  and  were  not  de 
ceived  ;  but  we  were  charmed  just  the 
same. 

It  is  a  trick  that  all  birds  know,  and  I 
had  it  played  upon  me  by  the  mother 
snipe  and  mother  wild-duck  that  haunted 
our  dam,  as  well  as  by  the  quail.  With 
the  snipe,  once,  I  had  a  fancy  to  see  how 
far  the  mother  would  carry  the  ruse,  and 
so  ran  after  her ;  but  in  doing  this  I  trod 
on  one  of  her  young — a  soft,  gray  mite, 
not  distinguishable  from  the  gray  pebbles 
where  it  ran.  I  took  it  tenderly  up  in  my 
hand,  and  it  is  a  pang  to  me  yet  to  think 
how  it  gasped  once  and  died.  A  boy  is  a 
strange  mixture — as  the  man  who  comes 
after  him  is.  I  should  not  have  minded 
knocking  over  that  whole  brood  of  snipes 


with  my  gun,  if  I  could ;  but  this  poor 
little  death  was  somehow  very  personal 
in  its  appeal. 

I  had  no  such  regrets  in  respect  to  the 
young  wild -ducks,  which,  indeed,  I  had 
no  such  grievous  accident  with.  I  left 
their  mother  to  flounder  and  flutter  away 
as  she  would,  and  took  to  the  swamp  where 
her  young  sought  refuge  from  me.  There 
I  spent  half  a  day  wading  about  in  waters 
that  were  often  up  to  my  waist,  and  full 
of  ugly  possibilities  of  mud-turtles  and 
water-snakes,  trying  to  put  my  hand  on 
one  of  the  ducklings.  They  rose  every 
where  else,  and  dived  again  after  a  breath 
of  air ;  but  at  last  one  of  them  came  up  in 
my  very  grasp.  It  did  not  struggle,  but 
how  its  wild  heart  bounded  against  my 
hand !  I  carried  it  home  to  show  it  and 
boast  of  my  capture,  and  then  I  took  it 
back  to  its  native  swamp.  It  dived  in 
stantly,  and  I  hope  it  found  its  bereaved 
family  somewhere  under  the  water. 


VI 


THE  winter,  which  was  so  sore  a  trial 
for  my  mother  in  the  log-cabin,  and  was 
not,  perhaps,  such  a  poetic  rapture  for  my 
father  as  he  had  hoped,  was  a  long  de 
light  to  their  children. 

The  centre  of  our  life  in  the  cabin  was, 
of  course,  the  fireplace,  whose  hugeness 
and  whose  mighty  fires  remained  a  won 
der  with  us.  There  was  a  crane  in  the 
chimney  and  dangling  pot  -  hooks,  and 
until  the  cooking-stove  could  be  set  up  in 
an  adjoining  shed  the  cooking  had  to  be 
done  on  the  hearth,  and  the  bread  baked 
in  a  Dutch-oven  in  the  hot  ashes.  We 
had  always  heard  of  this  operation,  which 
was  a  necessity  of  early  days  ;  and  noth 
ing  else,  perhaps,  realized  them  so  vividly 
for  us  as  the  loaf  laid  in  the  iron-lidded 
skillet,  which  was  then  covered  with  ashes 
and  heaped  with  coals. 

I  am  not  certain  that  the  bread  tasted 

4 


any  better  for  the  romantic  picturesque- 
ness  of  its  experience,  or  that  the  corn- 
meal,  mixed  warm  from  the  mill  and 
baked  on  an  oak  plank  set  up  before  the 
fire,  had  merits  beyond  the  hoe-cake  of 
art ;  but  I  think  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  new  corn  grated  to  meal  when  just 
out  of  the  milk,  and  then  moulded  and 
put  in  like  manner  to  brown  in  the  glow 
of  such  embers,  would  still  have  the 
sweetness  that  was  incomparable  then. 
When  the  maple  sap  started  in  February, 
we  tried  the  scheme  we  had  cherished  all 
winter  of  making  with  it  tea  which  should 
be  in  a  manner  self -sugared.  But  the 
scheme  was  a  failure— we  spoiled  the  sap 
without  sweetening  the  tea. 

We  sat  up  late  before  the  big  fire  at 
night,  our  faces  burning  in  the  glow,  and 
our  backs  and  feet  freezing  in  the  draft 
that  swept  in  from  the  imperfectly  clos 
ing  door,  and  then  we  boys  climbed  to 
our  bed  in  the  loft.  We  reached  it  by  a 
ladder,  which  we  should  have  been  glad 
to  pull  up  after  us  as  a  protection  against 
Indians  in  the  pioneer  fashion  ;  but, 
with  the  advancement  of  modern  lux- 


ury,  the  ladder  had  been  nailed  to  the 
floor. 

Once  aloft,  however,  we  were  in  a  do 
main  sacred  to  the  past.  The  rude  floor 
rattled  and  wavered  loosely  under  our 
tread,  and  the  window  in  the  gable  stood 
open  or  shut  at  its  own  will.  There  were 
cracks  in  the  shingles,  through  which  we 
could  see  the  stars,  when  there  were  stars, 
and  which,  when  the  first  snow  came, 
let  the  flakes  sift  in  upon  the  floor.  I 
should  not  like  to  step  out  of  bed  into  a 
snow-wreath  in  the  morning  now;  but 
then  I  was  glad  to  do  it,  and  so  far  from 
thinking  that  or  anything  in  our  life  a 
hardship,  I  counted  it  all  joy. 

Our  barrels  of  paper-covered  books  were 
stowed  away  in  that  loft,  and  overhauling 
them  one  day  I  found  a  paper  copy  of  the 
poems  of  a  certain  Henry  W.  Longfellow, 
then  wholly  unknown  to  me ;  and  while  the 
old  grist-mill,  whistling  and  wheezing  to  it- 
self,made  a  vague  music  in  my  ears,my  soul 
was  filled  with  this  new,  strange  sweetness. 
I  read  the  "Spanish  Student  "  there,  and 
the"Coplasde  Manrique,"and  the  solemn 
and  ever-beautiful  "  Voices  of  the  Night." 


There  were  other  books  in  those  bar 
rels  which  I  must  have  read  also,  but  I 
remember  only  these,  that  spirited  me 
again  to  Spain,  where  I  had  already  been 
with  Irving,  and  led  me  to  attack  seriously 
the  old  Spanish  grammar  which  had  been 
knocking  about  our  house  ever  since  my 
father  bought  it  from  a  soldier  of  the 
Mexican  War. 

But  neither  these  nor  any  other  books 
made  me  discontented  with  the  small- 
boy's  world  about  me.  They  made  it  a  lit 
tle  more  populous  with  visionary  shapes, 
but  that  was  well,  and  there  was  room  for 
them  all.  It  was  not  darkened  with  cares, 
and  the  duties  in  it  were  not  many. 

We  had  always  worked,  and  we  older 
boys  had  our  axes  now,  and  believed  our 
selves  to  be  clearing  a  piece  of  woods 
which  covered  a  hill  belonging  to  the 
milling  property.  The  timber  was  black- 
walnut  and  oak  and  hickory,  and  I  cannot 
think  we  made  much  havoc  in  it ;  but  we 
must  have  felled  some  of  the  trees,  for  I 
remember  helping  to  cut  them  into  saw- 
logs  with  the  cross-cut  saw,  and  the  rapt 
ure  we  had  in  starting  our  logs  from  the 


brow  of  the  hill  and  watching  their  whirl 
ing  rush  to  the  bottom.  We  experi 
mented,  as  boys  will,  and  we  felled  one 
large  hickory  with  the  saw  instead  of  the 
axe,  and  barely  escaped  with  our  lives 
when  it  suddenly  split  near  the  bark,  and 
the  butt  shot  out  between  us.  I  preferred 
buckeye  and  sycamore  trees  for  my  own 
axe  ;  they  were  of  no  use  when  felled,  but 
they  chopped  delightfully. 


VII 


THEY  grew  abundantly  on  the  island 
which  formed  another  feature  of  our  odd 
ly  distributed  property.  This  island  was 
by  far  its  most  fascinating  feature,  and 
for  us  boys  it  had  all  the  charm  and  mys 
tery  which  have  in  every  land  and  age 
endeared  islands  to  the  heart  of  man.  It 
was  not  naturally  an  island,  but  had  been 
made  so  by  the  mill-races  bringing  the 
water  from  the  dam,  and  emptying  into 
the  river  again  below  the  mills.  Yet  no 
atoll  in  the  far  Pacific  could  have  been 
more  satisfactory  to  us.  It  was  low  and 
flat,  and  was  hall  under  water  in  every 
spring  freshet,  but  it  had  precious  areas 
grown  up  to  tall  iron-weeds,  which,  with 
ering  and  hardening  in  the  frost,  supplied 
us  with  the  spears  and  darts  for  our  Ind 
ian  fights. 

The  island  was  always  our  battle-ground, 
and  it  resounded  in  the  long  afternoons 


with  the  war-cries  of  the  encountering 
tribes.  We  had  a  book  in  those  days 
called  Western  Adventure,  which  was  made 
up  of  tales  of  pioneer  and  frontier  life, 
and  we  were  constantly  reading  our 
selves  back  into  that  life.  I  have  won 
dered  often  since  who  wrote  or  compiled 
that  book ;  we  had  printed  it  ourselves  in 

D ,  from  the  stereotype  plates  of  some 

temporary  publisher  whose  name  is  quite 
lost  to  me.  This  book,  and  Howes  Col 
lections  for  the  History  of  Ohio,  were  full 
of  stories  of  the  backwoodsmen  and  war 
riors  who  had  made  our  State  a  battle 
ground  for  nearly  fifty  years,  and  our  own 
life  in  the  log-cabin  gave  new  zest  to  the 
tales  of  "  Simon  Kenton,  the  Pioneer,"and 
"  Simon  Girty,  the  Renegade ;"  of  the  cap 
tivity  of  Crawford,  and  his  death  at  the 
stake ;  of  the  massacre  of  the  Moravian 
Indians  at  Gnadenhiitten ;  of  the  defeat 
of  St.  Clair  and  the  victory  of  Wayne; 
of  a  hundred  other  wild  and  bloody  inci 
dents  of  our  annals.  We  read  of  them 
at  night  till  we  were  afraid  to  go  up  the 
ladder  to  the  ambuscade  of  savages  in 
our  loft,  but  we  fought  them  over  by  day 


with  undaunted  spirits.  With  our  native 
romance  I  sometimes  mingled  with  my 
own  reading  a  strain  of  old-world  poetry, 
and  "  Hametel  Zegri "  and  the  "  Unknown 
Spanish  Knight/' encountered  in  the  Vega 
before  Granada  on  our  island,  while  Adam 
Poe  and  Bigfoot  were  taking  breath  from 
their  deadly  struggle  in  the  waters  of  the 
Ohio. 


VIII 

WHEN  the  spring  opened  we  broke  up 
the  sod  on  a  more  fertile  part  of  the 
island,  and  planted  a  garden  there  beside 
our  field  of  corn.  We  planted  long  rows 
of  sweet  -  potatoes,  and  a  splendid  pro 
fusion  of  melons,  which  duly  came  up 
with  their  empty  seed-shells  fitted  like 
helmets  over  their  heads,  and  were  mostly 
laid  low  the  next,  day  by  the  cut-worms 
which  swarmed  in  the  upturned  sod.  I 
have  no  recollection  of  really  enjoying  any 
of  the  visionary  red-cores  and  white-cores 
which  had  furnished  us  a  Barmecide  feast 
when  we  planted  their  seed,  and  so  I  sup 
pose  none  of  them  grew. 

But  the  sweet-potatoes  had  better  luck. 
Better  luck  I  did  not  think  it  then,  their 
rows  seemed  interminable  to  a  boy  set  to 
clear  their  slopes  of  purslane  with  his  hoe ; 
though  I  do  not  now  imagine  they  were 
necessarily  a  day's  journey  in  length. 

5 


Neither  could  the  cornfield  beside  them 
have  been  very  vast ;  but  again  reluctant 
boyhood  has  a  different  scale  for  the 
measurement  of  such  things,  and  per 
haps  if  I  were  now  set  to  hill  it  up  I 
might  think  differently  about  its  size. 

I  dare  say  it  was  not  well  cared  for,  but 
an  inexhaustible  wealth  of  ears  came  into 
the  milk  just  at  the  right  moment  for  our 
enjoyment.  We  had  then  begun  to  build 
our  new  house.  The  frame  had  been 
raised,  as  the  custom  of  that  country  still 
was,  in  a  frolic  of  the  neighbors,  to  whom 
unlimited  coffee  and  a  boiled  ham  had 
been  served  in  requital  of  their  civility, 
and  now  we  were  kiln-drying  the  green 
oak  flooring-boards.  To  do  this  we  had 
built  a  long  skeleton  hut,  and  had  set  the 
boards  upright  all  around  it  and  roofed 
it  with  them,  and  in  the  middle  of  it  we 
had  set  a  huge  old  cast-iron  stove,  in 
which  we  kept  a  roaring  fire. 

This  fire  had  to  be  watched  night  and 
day,  and  it  never  took  less  than  three  or 
four  boys,  and  often  all  the  boys  of  the 
neighborhood,  to  watch  it,  and  to  turn 
and  change  the  boards.  The  summer  of 


33 


Southern  Ohio  is  surely  no  joke,  and  it 
must  have  been  cruelly  hot  in  that  kiln ; 
but  I  remember  nothing  of  that;  I  re 
member  only  the  luxury  of  the  green 
corn,  whose  ears  we  spitted  on  the  points 
of  long  sticks  and  roasted  in  the  red-hot 
stove  ;  we  must  almost  have  roasted  our 
own  heads  at  the  same  time. 

But  I  suppose  that  if  the  heat  within 
the  kiln  or  without  ever  became  intoler 
able,  we  escaped  from  it  and  from  our 
light  summer  clothing,  reduced  almost 
to  a  Greek  simplicity,  in  a  delicious  plunge 
in  the  river.  In  those  days  one  went  in 
swimming  (we  did  not  say  bathing)  four 
or  five  times  a  day  with  advantage  and 
refreshment ;  anything  more  than  that 
was,  perhaps,  thought  unwholesome. 

We  had  our  choice  of  the  shallows, 
where  the  long  ripple  was  warmed  through 
and  through  by  the  sun  in  which  it 
sparkled,  or  the  swimming -hole,  whose 
depths  were  almost  as  tepid,  but  were 
here  and  there  interwoven  with  mysteri 
ous  cool  under-currents. 

We  believed  that  there  were  snapping- 
turtles  and  water-snakes  in  our  swimming 


34 


holes,  though  we  never  saw  any.  There 
were  some  fish  in  the  river,  chiefly  suckers 
and  catfish  in  the  spring,  when  the  water 
was  high  and  turbid,  and  in  summer 
the  bream  that  we  call  sunfish  in  the 
West,  and  there  was  a  superstition,  never 
verified  by  me,  of  bass.  The  truth  is,  we 
did  not  care  much  for  fishing,  though  of 
course  that  had  its  turn  in  the  pleasures 
of  our  rolling  year. 

There  were  crawfish,  both  hard  shell 
and  soft,  to  be  had  at  small  risk,  and 
mussels  in  plenty.  Their  shells  furnished 
us  the  material  for  many  rings  zealously 
begun,  never  finished ;  we  did  not  see  why 
they  did  not  produce  pearls;  but  perhaps 
they  were  all  eaten  up,  before  the  pearl- 
disease  could  attack  them,  by  the  musk- 
rats,  before  whose  holes  their  shells  were 
heaped.  Sometimes  we  saw  a  muskrat 
smoothly  swimming  to  or  from  his  hole, 
and  making  a  long  straight  line  through 
the  water,  and  lusted  for  his  blood ;  but 
he  always  chose  the  times  for  these  excur 
sions  when  we  had  not  our  trusty  smooth 
bore  with  us,  and  we  stoned  him  in  vain. 

I   have  spoken   of  the   freshets  which 


sometimes  inundated  our  island ;  but  these 
were  never  very  serious.  They  fertilized 
it  with  the  loam  they  brought  down  from 
richer  lands  above,  and  they  strewed  its 
low  shores  with  stranded  drift.  But  there 
were  so  many  dams  on  the  river  that  no 
freshet  could  gather  furious  head  upon  it; 
at  the  worst,  it  could  back  up  upon  us 
jthe  slack  water  from  the  mill-dam  be.low 
us.  Once  this  took  place  in  such  degree 
that  our  wheels  stood  still  in  their  flooded 
tubs.  This  was  a  truly  tremendous  time. 
The  event  appears  in  the  retrospect  to 
have  covered  many  days ;  I  dare  say  it 
covered  a  half-day  at  most. 

Of  skating  on  the  river  I  think  we  had 
none.  The  winter  often  passes  in  that 
latitude  without  making  ice  enough  for 
that  sport,  and  there  could  not  have  been 
much  sledding  either.  We  read,  envi 
ously  enough,  in  Peter  Parley's  First 
Book  of  History,  of  the  coasting  on  Bos 
ton  Common,  and  we  made  some  weak- 
kneed  sleds  (whose  imbecile  runners  flat 
tened  hopelessly  under  them)  when  the 
light  snows  began  to  come  ;  but  we  never 
had  any  real  coasting,  as  our  elders  never 


had  any  real  sleighing  in  the  jumpers 
they  made  by  splitting  a  hickory  sapling 
for  runners,  and  mounting  any  sort  of 
rude  box  upon  them.  They  might  often 
have  used  sleighs  in  the  mud,  however ; 
that  was  a  foot  deep  on  most  of  the 
roads,  and  lasted  all  winter. 

There  were  not  many  boys  in  our  neigh 
borhood,  and  we  brothers  had  to  make 
the  most  of  one  another's  company.  For 
a  little  while  in  the  winter  some  of  us 
went  two  miles  away  through  the  woods 
to  school ;  but  there  was  not  much  to  be 
taught  a  reading  family  like  ours  in  that 
log-hut,  and  I  suppose  it  was  not  thought 
worth  while  to  keep  us  at  it.  No  im 
pression  of  it  remains  to  me,  except  the 
wild,  lonesome  cooing  of  the  turtle-doves 
when  they  began  to  nest  in  the  neighbor 
ing  oaks. 


IX 


WE  had  a  poor  fellow,  named  B , 

for  our  saw -miller,  whose,  sad  fortunes 
are  vividly  associated  with  the  loveliness 
of  the  early  summer  in  my  mind.  He 
was  a  hapless,  harmless,  kindly  creature, 
and  he  had  passed  most  of  his  manhood 
in  a  sort  of  peonage  to  a  rich  neighboring 
farmer  whom  he  was  hopelessly  in  debt 
to,  so  that  I  suppose  it  was  like  the  gift 
of  freedom  to  him  when  he  came  into 
our  employ ;  but  his  happiness  did  not 
last  long. 

Within  a  month  or  two  he  was  seized 
with  a  flux  that  carried  him  off  after  a 
few  days,  and  then  began  to  attack  his 
family.  He  had  half  a  dozen  children, 
and  they  all  died,  except  one  boy,  who 
was  left  with  his  foolish,  simple  mother. 
My  oldest  brother  had  helped  nurse  them, 
and  had  watched  with  them,  and  seen 
them  die ;  and  it  fell  to  me  to  go  to  the 


next  village  one  morning  and  buy  linen 
to  make  the  last  two  of  their  shrouds.  I 
mounted  the  italic -footed  mare,  bare 
backed,  as  usual,  with  my  legs  going  to 
sleep  on  either  side  of  her,  but  my  brain 
wildly  awake,  and  set  out  through  the 
beautiful  morning,  turned  lurid  and  ghast 
ly  by  the  errand  on  which  I  was  bent. 

When  I  came  back  with  that  linen  in 
my  hand  it  was  as  if  I  were  accompanied 
by  troops  of  sheeted  dead,  from  whom 
that  italic-footed  nightmare  could  not  be 
persuaded  to  escape  by  any  sawing  of  her 
mouth,  or  any  thumping  of  her  sides 
with  my  bare  heels. 

I  am  astonished  now  that  this  terror 
should  have  been  so  transient.  The  little 
ones  were  laid  with  their  father  and  their 
brothers  and  sisters  in  the  unfenced  grave 
yard  on  the  top  of  our  hill,  where  the  pigs 
foraged  for  acorns  above  their  heads  in 
the  fall ;  and  then  my  sun  shone  again.  So 

did  the  sun  of  the  surviving  B s.  The 

mother  turned  her  household  goods  into 
ready  money,  and  with  this  and  the  wages 
due  her  husband  bought  a  changeable 
silk  dress  for  herself  and  an  oil-cloth  cap 


39 


for  her  son,  and  equipped  in  these  splen 
dors  the  two  set  off  up  the  road  towards 

the  town  of  X ,  gay,  light-hearted  in 

their  destitution,  and  consoled  after  the 
bereavement  of  a  single  week. 


OUR  new  house  got  on  slowly.  There 
were  various  delays  and  some  difficulties, 
but  it  was  all  intensely  interesting,  and 
we  watched  its  growth  with  eyes  that 
hardly  left  it  night  or  day.  Life  in  the 
log-cabin  had  not  become  pleasanter  with 
the  advance  of  the  summer ;  we  were  all 
impatient  to  be  out  of  it.  We  looked 
forward  to  our  occupation  of  the  new 
house  with  an  eagerness  which  even  in  us 
boys  must  have  had  some  sense  of  pres 
ent  discomfort  at  the  bottom  of  it.  We 
were  to  have  a  parlor,  a  dining-room,  and 
a  library;  there  were  to  be  three  chambers 
for  the  family  and  a  spare  room  ;  after  six 
months  in  the  log-cabin  we  could  hardly 
have  imagined  it,  if  we  had  not  seen  these 
divisions  actually  made  by  the  studding. 

In  that  region  there  is  no  soft  wood. 
The  frame  was  of  oak,  and  my  father  de 
cided  to  have  the  house  weather-boarded 


and  shingled  with  black -walnut,  which 
was  so  much  cheaper  than  pine,  and 
which,  left  in  its  natural  state,  he  thought 
would  be  agreeable  in  color.  In  this 
neither  the  carpenter  nor  any  of  the 
neighbors  could  think  with  him ;  the 
local  ideal  was  brick  for  a  house,  and  if 
not  that,  then  white  paint  and  green 
blinds,  and  always  two  front  doors  ;  but 
my  father  had  his  way,  and  our  home 
was  fashioned  according  to  his  plans. 

It  appeared  to  me  a  palace.  I  spent  all 
the  leisure  I  had  from  swimming  and 
Indian  fighting  and  reading  in  watching 
the  carpenter  work,  and  hearing  him 
talk  ;  his  talk  was  not  the  wisest,  but  he 
thought  very  well  of  it  himself,  and  I  had 
so  far  lapsed  from  civilization  that  I  stood 
in  secret  awe  of  him,  because  he  came 
from  town  —  from  the  pitiful  little  vil 
lage,  namely,  where  I  went  to  buy  those 
shrouds. 

I  try  to  give  merely  a  child's  impres 
sions  of  our  life,  which  were  nearly  all 
delightful ;  but  it  must  have  been  hard 
for  my  elders,  and  for  my  mother  espe 
cially,  who  could  get  no  help,  or  only 


briefly  and  fitfully,  in  the  work  that  fell 
to  her.  What  her  pleasures  were  I  can 
scarcely  imagine.  She  was  cut  off  from 
church-going  because  we  were  Sweden- 
borgians  ;  short  of  Cincinnati,  sixty  miles 
away,  there  was  no  worship  of  our  faith, 
and  the  local  preaching  was  not  edifying, 
theologically  or  intellectually. 

Now  and  then  a  New  Church  minister, 
of  those  who  used  to  visit  us  in  town, 
passed  a  Sunday  with  us  in  the  cabin, 
and  that  was  a  rare  time  of  mental  and 
spiritual  refreshment.  Otherwise,  my 
father  read  us  a  service  out  of  the  Book 
of  Worship,  or  a  chapter  from  the  Heav 
enly  Arcana;  and  week-day  nights,  while 
the  long  evenings  lasted,  he  read  poetry 
to  us — Scott  or  Moore  or  Thomson,  or 
some  of  the  more  didactic  poets. 

In  the  summer  evenings,  after  her  long 
hard  day's  work  was  done,  my  mother 
sometimes  strolled  out  upon  the  island 
with  my  father,  and  loitered  on  the  bank 
to  look  at  her  boys  in  the  river.  One 
such  evening  I  recall,  and  how  sad  our 
gay  voices  were  in  the  dim,  dewy  air.  My 
father  had  built  a  flat  boat,  which  we 


43 


kept  on  the  smooth  waters  of  our  dam, 
and  on  Sunday  afternoons  the  whole  fam 
ily  went  out  in  it.  We  rowed  far  up,  till 
we  struck  the  swift  current  from  the  mill 
above  us,  and  then  let  the  boat  drift  slow 
ly  down  again. 

It  does  not  now  seem  very  exciting,  but 
then  to  a  boy  whose  sense  was  open  to 
every  intimation  of  beauty,  the  silence 
that  sang  in  our  ears,  the  stillness  of  the 
dam,  where  the  low  uplands  and  the  fring 
ing  sycamores  and  every  rush  and  grass- 
blade  by  the  brink  perfectly  glassed  them 
selves  and  the  vast  blue  sky  overhead, 
were  full  of  mystery,  of  divine  promise, 
and  holy  awe ;  and  life  was  rich  unspeak 
ably. 

I  recollect  the  complex  effect  of  these 
Sunday  afternoons  as  if  they  were  all  one 
sharp  event ;  I  recall  in  like  manner  the 
starry  summer  nights  when  my  brother 
used  to  row  across  the  river  to  the  cabin 
of  the  B—  —  s,  where  the  poor  man  and 
his  children  lay  dying  in  turn,  and  I  won 
dered  and  shuddered  at  his  courage  ;  but 
there  is  one  night  that  remains  single  and 
peerless  in  my  memory. 


44 


My  brother  and  I  had  been  sent  on  an 
errand  to  sorre  neighbor's — for  a  bag  of 
potatoes  or  a  joint  of  meat ;  it  does  not 
matter — and  we  had  been  somehow  be 
lated,  so  that  it  was  well  into  the  night 
when  we  started  home,  and  the  round 
moon  was  high  when  we  stopped  to  rest 
in  a  piece  of  the  lovely  open  woodland 
of  that  region,  where  the  trees  stand  in  a 
park-like  freedom  from  underbrush,  and 
the  grass  grows  dense  and  rich  among 
them. 

We  took  the  pole,  on  which  we  had 
slung  the  bag,  from  our  shoulders,  and  sat 
down  on  an  old  long-fallen  log,  and  lis 
tened  to  the  closely  interwoven  monoto 
nies  of  the  innumerable  katydids,  in  which 
the  air  seemed  clothed  as  with  a  mesh  of 
sound.  The  shadows  fell  black  from  the 
trees  upon  the  smooth  sward,  but  every 
other  place  was  full  of  the  tender  light  in 
which  all  forms  were  rounded  and  soft 
ened  ;  the  moon  hung  tranced  in  the  sky. 
We  scarcely  spoke  in  the  shining  sol- 
• .  itude,  the  solitude  which  for  once  had  no 
terrors  for  the  childish  fancy,  but  was  only 
beautiful.  This  perfect  beauty  seemed 


45 


not  only  to  liberate  me  from  the  feai 
which  is  the  prevailing  mood  of  child 
hood,  but  to  lift  my  soul  nearer  and 
nearer  to  the  soul  of  all  things  in  an  ex 
quisite  sympathy.  Such  moments  never 
pass  ;  they  are  ineffaceable ;  their  rapture 
immortalizes;  from  them  we  know  that 
whatever  perishes  there  is  something  in 
us  that  cannot  die,  that  divinely  regrets, 
divinely  hooes. 


XI 


OUR  log-cabin  stood  only  a  stone's  cast 
from  the  gray  old  weather-tinted  grist 
mill,  whose  voice  was  music  for  us  by 
night  and  by  day,  so  that  on  Sundays, 
when  the  water  was  shut  off  from  the 
great  tub-wheels  in  its  basement,  it  was  as 
if  the  world  had  gone  deaf  and  dumb.  A 
soft  sibilance  ordinarily  prevailed  over  the 
dull,  hoarse  murmur  of  the  machinery ; 
but  late  at  night,  when  the  water  gath 
ered  that  mysterious  force  which  the  dark 
ness  gives  it,  the  voice  of  the  mill  had 
something  weird  in  it  like  a  human  moan. 

It  was  in  all  ways  a  place  which  I  did 
not  care  to  explore  alone.  It  was  very 
well,  with  a  company  of  boys,  to  tumble 
and  wrestle  in  the  vast  bins  full  of  golden 
wheat,  or  to  climb  the  slippery  staks  to 
the  cooling-floor  in  the  loft,  whither  the 
little  pockets  of  the  elevators  carried  the 
meal  warm  from  the  burrs,  and  the  blades 


47 


of  the  wheel  up  there,  worn  smooth  by 
years  of  use,  spread  it  out  in  an  ever- 
widening  circle,  and  caressed  it  with  a 
thousand  repetitions  of  their  revolution. 
But  the  heavy  rush  of  the  water  upon  the 
wheels  in  the  dim,  humid  basement,  the 
angry  whirl  of  the  burrs  under  the  hop 
pers,  the  high  windows,  powdered  and 
darkened  with  the  floating  meal,  the  vague 
corners  festooned  with  flour-laden  cob 
webs,  the  jolting  and  shaking  of  the  bolt 
ing-cloths,  had  all  a  potentiality  of  terror 
in  them  that  was  not  a  pleasure  to  the 
boy's  sensitive  nerves.  Ghosts,  against 
all  reason  and  experience,  were  but  too 
probably  waiting  their  chance  to  waylay 
unwary  steps  there  whenever  two  feet 
ventured  alone  into  the  mill,  and  Indians, 
of  course,  made  it  their  ambush. 

With  the  saw-mill  it  was  another  mat 
ter.  That  was  always  an  affair  of  the 
broad  day.  It  began  work  and  quitted 
work  like  a  Christian,  and  did  not  keep 
the  grist-mill's  unnatural  hours.  Yet  it 
had  its  fine  moments,  when  the  upright- 
saw  lunged  through  the  heavy  oak  log 
and  gave  out  the  sweet  smell  of  the 

7 


bruised  woody  fibres,  or  then  when  the 
circular-saw  wailed  through  the  length  of 
the  lath  we  were  making  for  the  new 
house,  and  freed  itself  with  a  sharp  cry, 
and  purred  softly  till  the  wood  touched  it 
again,  and  it  broke  again  into  its  long  la 
ment. 

The  warm  sawdust  in  the  pits  below 
was  almost  as  friendly  to  bare  feet  as  the 
warm  meal ;  and  it  was  splendid  to  rush 
down  the  ways  on  the  cars  that  brought 
up  the  logs  or  carried  away  the  lumber. 
How  we  should  have  lived  through  all 
these  complicated  mechanical  perils  I  can 
not  very  well  imagine  now  ;  but  there  is 
a  special  providence  that  watches  over 
boys  and  appoints  the  greater  number  of 
them  to  grow  up  in  spite  of  their  environ 
ment. 

Nothing  was  ever  drowned  in  those 
swift  and  sullen  races,  except  our  spool- 
pig,  as  they  call  the  invalid  titman  of  the 
herd  in  that  region  ;  though  once  one  of 
the  grist-miller's  children  came  near  giv 
ing  a  touch  of  tragedy  to  their  waters. 
He  fell  into  the  race  just  above  the  saw 
mill  gate,  and  was  eddying  round  into  the 


49 


rush  upon  its  wheel,  when  I  caught  him 
by  his  long  yellow  hair,  and  pulled  him 
out.  His  mother  came  rushing  from  her 
door  at  the  outcry  we  had  all  set  up,  and 
perceiving  him  safe,  immediately  fell  upon 
him  in  merited  chastisement.  No  notice, 
then  or  thereafter,  was  taken  of  his  pre 
server  by  either  of  his  parents  ;  but  I  was 
not  the  less  a  hero  in  my  own  eyes. 


XII 


I  CANNOT  remember  now  whether  it 
was  in  the  early  spring  after  our  first  win 
ter  in  the  log-cabin,  or  in  the  early  part 
of  the  second  winter,  which  found  us  still 
there,  that  it  was  justly  thought  fit  I 
should  leave  these  vain  delights  and  go 
to  earn  some  money  in  a  printing-office 

in   X .      I   was,  though   so   young,  a 

good  compositor,  swift  and  clean,  and 
when  the  foreman  of  the  printing-office 
appeared  one  day  at  our  cabin  and  asked 
if  I  could  come  to  take  the  place  of  a 
delinquent  hand,  there  was  no  question 
with  any  one  but  myself  that  I  must  go. 
For  me,  a  terrible  homesickness  fell  in- 
tantly  upon  me — a  homesickness  that  al 
ready,  in  the  mere  prospect  of  absence, 
pierced  my  heart  and  filled  my  throat, 
and  blinded  me  with  tears. 

The  foreman  wanted    me  to  go  back 
with  him  in  his  buggy,  but  a  day's  grace 


was  granted  me,  and  then  my  older  broth 
er  took  me  to  X ,  where  he  was  to 

meet  my  father  at  the  railroad  station  on 
his  return  from  Cincinnati.  It  had  been 
snowing,  in  the  soft  Southern  Ohio  fash 
ion,  but  the  clouds  had  broken  away,  and 
the  evening  fell  in  a  clear  sky,  apple-green 
along  the  horizon  as  we  drove  on.  This 
color  of  the  sky  must  always  be  associated 
for  me  with  the  despair  that  then  filled 
my  soul,  and  which  I  was  constantly  swal 
lowing  down  with  great  gulps.  We  joked, 
and  got  some  miserable  laughter  out  of 
the  efforts  of  the  horse  to  free  himself 
from  the  snow  that  balled  in  his  hoofs, 
but  I  suffered  all  the  time  an  anguish  of 
homesickness  that  now  seems  incredible. 
All  the  time  I  had  every  fact  of  the  cabin 
life  before  me  ;  what  each  of  the  children 
was  doing,  especially  the  younger  ones, 
and  what,  above  all,  my  mother  was  do 
ing,  and  how  at  every  moment  she  was 
looking  ;  I  saw  the  wretched  little  phan 
tasm  of  myself  moving  about  there. 

The  editor  to  whom  my  brother  deliv 
ered  me  over  could  not  conceive  of  me  as 
tragedy;  he  received  me  as  if  I  were  the 


merest  commonplace,  and  delivered  me 
in  turn  to  the  good  man  with  whom  I 
was  to  board.  There  were  half  a  dozen 
school-girls  boarding  there,  too,  and  their 
gayety,  when  they  came  in,  added  to  my 
desolation. 

The  man  said  supper  was  about  ready, 
and  he  reckoned  I  would  get  something 
to  eat  if  I  looked  out  for  myself.  Upon 
reflection  I  answered  that  I  thought  I 
did  not  want  any  supper,  and  that  I  must 
go  to  find  my  brother,  whom  I  had  to  tell 
something.  I  found  him  at  the  station 
and  told  him  I  was  going  home  with  him. 
He  tried  to  reason  with  me,  or  rather 
with  my  frenzy  of  homesickness;  and  I 
agreed  to  leave  the  question  open  till  my 
father  came  ;  but  in  my  own  mind  it  was 
closed. 

My  father  suggested,  however,  some 
thing  that  had  not  occured  to  either  of 
us;  we  should  both  stay.  This  seemed 
possible  for  me ;  but  not  at  that  boarding- 
house,  not  within  the  sound  of  the  laugh 
ter  of  those  girls !  We  went  to  the  hotel, 
where  we  had  beefsteak  and  ham  and 
eggs  and  hot  biscuit  every  morning  for 


53 


breakfast,  and  where  we  paid  two  dollars 
apiece  for  the  week  we  stayed.  At  the 
end  of  this  time  the  editor  had  found 
another  hand,  and  we  went  home,  where 
I  was  welcomed  as  from  a  year's  absence. 

Again  I  was  called  to  suffer  this  trial, 
the  chief  trial  of  my  boyhood,  but  it  came 
in  a  milder  form,  and  was  lightened  to 
me  not  only  by  the  experience  of  survival 
from  it,  but  by  various  circumstances. 

This  time  I  went  to  D ,  where  one  of 

my  uncles  was  still  living,  and  he  some 
how  learned  the  misery  I  was  in,  and 
bade  me  come  and  stay  with  him  while  I 

remained  in  D .  I  was  very  fond  of 

him,  and  of  the  gentle  creature,  his  wife, 
who  stood  to  me  for  all  that  was  at  once 
naturally  and  conventionally  refined,  a 
type  of  gracious  loveliness  and  worldly 
splendor. 

They  had  an  only  child,  to  whom  her 
cousin's  presence  in  the  house  was  a  con 
stant  joy.  Over  them  all  hung  the  shad 
ow  of  fragile  health,  and  I  look  back  at 
them  through  the  halo  of  their  early 
death  ;  but  the  remembrance  cannot  make 
them  kinder  than  they  really  were,  With 


54 


all  that,  I  was  homesick  still.  I  fell  asleep 
with  the  radiant  image  of  our  log-cabin 
before  my  eyes,  and  I  woke  with  my  heart 
like  lead  in  my  breast. 

I  did  not  see  how  I  could  get  through 
the  day,  and  I  began  it  with  miserable 
tears.  I  had  found  that  by  drinking  a 
great  deal  of  water  at  my  meals  I  could 
keep  down  the  sobs  for  the  time  being, 
and  I  practised  this  device  to  the  surprise 
and  alarm  of  my  relatives,  who  were 
troubled  at  the  spectacle  of  my  unnatural 
thirst. 

Sometimes  I  left  the  table  and  ran  out 
for  a  burst  of  tears  behind  the  house ; 
every  night  after  dark  I  cried  there  alone. 
But  I  could  not  wholly  hide  my  suffering, 
and  I  suppose  that  after  a  while  the  sight 
of  it  became  intolerable.  At  any  rate,  a 
blessed  evening  came  when,  returning 
from  work,  I  found  my  brother  waiting 
for  me  at  my  uncle's  house;  and  the  next 
morning  we  set  out  for  home  in  the  keen, 
silent  dark  before  the  November  dawn. 

We  were  both  mounted  on  the  italic- 
footed  mare,  I  behind  my  brother,  with 
my  arms  round  him  to  keep  on  better; 


55 


and  so  we  rode  out  of  the  Sleeping  town, 
and  into  the  lifting  shadow  of  the  woods. 
They  might  have  swarmed  with  ghosts 
or  Indians;  I  should  not  have  cared;  I 
was  going  home. 

By -and -by,  as  we  rode  on,  the  birds 
began  to  call  one  another  from  their 
dreams,  the  quails  whistled  from  the 
stubble  fields,  and  the  crows  clamored 
from  the  tops  of  the  deadening  ;*  the 
squirrels  raced  along  the  fence-rails,  and, 
in  the  woods,  they  stopped  half-way  up 
the  boles  to  bark  at  us  ;  the  jays  strutted 
down  the  shelving  branches  to  offer  us  a 
passing  insult  and  defiance. 

Presently,  at  a  little  clearing,  we  came 
to  a  log-cabin ;  the  blue  smoke  curled 
from  its  chimney,  and  through  the  closed 
door  came  the  soft,  low  hum  of  a  spin 
ning-wheel.  The  red  and  yellow  leaves, 
heavy  with  the  cold  dew,  dripped  round 
us  ;  and  I  was  profoundly  at  peace.  The 
homesick  will  understand  how  it  was  that 
I  was  as  if  saved  from  death. 

At  last  we  crossed  a  tail-race  from  the 
island,  and  turned  up,  not  at  the  old  log- 

*  The  trees  girdled,  and  left  to  die  and  decay,  standing. 
8 


cabin,  but  at  the  front  door  of  the  new 
house.  The  family  had  flitted  during  my 
absence,  and  now  they  all  burst  out  upon 
me  in  exultant  welcome,  and  my  mother 
caught  me  to  her  heart.  Doubtless  she 
knew  that  it  would  have  been  better  for 
me  to  have  conquered  myself;  but  my 
defeat  was  dearer  to  her  than  my  triumph 
could  have  been.  She  made  me  her 
honored  guest ;  I  had  the  best  place  at 
the  table,  the  tenderest  bit  of  steak,  the 
richest  cup  of  her  golden  coffee ;  and  all 
that  day  I  was  "  company." 

It  was  a  great  day,  which  I  must  have 
spent  chiefly  in  admiring  the  new  house. 
It  was  so  very  new  yet  as  not  to  be 
plastered ;  they  had  not  been  able  to  wait 
for  that ;  but  it  was  beautifully  lathed  in 
all  its  partitions,  and  the  closely-fitted 
floors  were  a  marvel  of  carpentering.  I 
roamed  through  all  the  rooms,  and  up  and 
down  the  stairs,  and  admired  the  familiar 
outside  of  the  house  as  freshly  as  if  it 
were  as  novel  as  the  interior,  where  open 
wood-fires  blazed  upon  the  hearths,  and 
threw  a  pleasant  light  of  home  upon  the 
latticed  walls. 


57 


I  must  have  gone  through  the  old  log- 
cabin  to  see  how  it  looked  without  us, 
but  I  have  no  recollection  of  ever  enter 
ing  its  door  again,  so  soon  had  it  ceased 
to  be  part  of  my  life.  We  remained  in 
the  new  house,  as  we  continued  to  call  it, 
for  two  or  three  months,  and  then  the 
changes  of  business  which  had  been  tak 
ing  place  without  the  knowledge  of  us 
children  called  us  away  from  that  roof, 
too,  and  we  left  the  mills  and  the  pleasant 
country  that  had  grown  so  dear,  to  take 
up  our  abode  in  city  streets  again.  We 
went  to  live  in  the  ordinary  brick  house 
of  our  civilization,  but  we  had  grown  so 
accustomed,  with  the  quick  and  facile 
adaptation  of  children,  to  living  in  a  house 
which  was  merely  lathed,  that  we  dis 
tinguished  this  last  dwelling  from  the 
new  house  as  a  "  plastered  house." 

Some  of  our  playmates  of  the 'neigh 
borhood  walked  part  of  the  way  to  X 

with  us  boys,  on  the  snowy  morning  when 
we  turned  our  backs  on  the  new  house 
to  take  the  train  in  that  town.  A  shadow 
of  the  gloom  in  which  our  spirits  were 
steeped  passes  over  me  again,  but  chiefly 


I  remember  our  difficulties  in  getting  our 
young  Newfoundland  dog  away  with  us ; 
and  our  subsequent  embarrassments  with 
this  animal  on  the  train,  where  he  sat  up 
and  barked  out  of  the  window  at  the 
passing  objects,  and  finally  became  sea 
sick,  blot  all  other  memories  of  that  time 
from  my  mind. 


XIII 

I  HAD  not  seen  the  old  place  for  thirty 
years,  when,  four  years  ago,  I  found  myself 

in  the  pretty  little  town  of  X ,  which 

had  once  appeared  so  lordly  and  so  proud 
to  my  poor  rustic  eyes,  with  a  vacant 
half-day  on  my  hands.  I  hired  a  buggy 
and  a  boy,  and  had  him  drive  me  down 
to  that  point  on  the  river  where  our 
mills  at  least  used  to  be. 

The  road  was  all  strange  to  me,  and 
when  I  reached  my  destination  that  was 
stranger  still.  The  timber  had  been  cut 
from  the  hill  and  island,  and  where  the 
stately  hickories  had  once  towered  and 
the  sycamores  drooped  there  was  now 
a  bald  knob  and  a  sterile  tract  of  sand, 
good  hardly  for  the  grazing  of  the  few 
cows  that  cropped  its  scanty  herbage. 
They  were  both  very  much  smaller :  the 
hill  was  not  the  mountain  it  had  seemed, 
the  island  no  longer  rivalled  the  propor 
tions  of  England. 


6o 


The  grist- mill,  whose  gray  bulk  had 
kept  so  large  a  place  in  my  memory,  was 
sadly  dwarfed,  and  in  its  decrepitude  it 
had  canted  backwards,  and  seemed  tot 
tering  to  its  fall.  I  explored  it  from 
wheel-pit  to  cooling-floor ;  there  was  not 
an  Indian  in  it,  but,  ah  !  what  ghosts ! 
ghosts  of  the  living  and  the  dead  ;  my 
brothers',  my  playmates',  my  own  !  At 
last,  it  was  really  haunted.  I  think  no 
touch  of  repair  had  been  put  upon  it,  or 
upon  the  old  saw-mill,  either,  on  whose 
roof  the  shingles  had  all  curled  up  like 
the  feathers  of  a  frizzly  chicken  in  the 
rains  and  suns  of  those  thirty  summers 
past.  The  head-race,  once  a  type  of  silent, 
sullen  power,  now  crept  feebly  to  its  work ; 
even  the  water  seemed  to  have  grown 
old,  and  anything  might  have  battled  suc 
cessfully  with  the  currents  where  the 
spool-pig  was  drowned  and  the  miller's 
boy  was  carried  so  near  his  death. 

I  had  with  me  for  company  the  boy  of 
the  present  miller,  who  silently  followed 
me  about,  and  answered  my  questions  as 
he  could.  The  epoch  of  our  possession 
was  as  remote  and  as  unstoried  to  him  as 


that  of  the  Mound-Builders.  A  small 
frame  house,  exactly  the  size  and  shape  of 
our  log -cabin,  occupied  its  site,  and  he 
had  never  even  heard  that  any  other  house 
had  ever  stood  there.  The  "  new  house," 
shingled  and  weather-boarded  with  black- 
walnut,  had  bleached  to  a  silvery  gray, 
and  had  no  longer  a  trace  of  its  rich 
brown.  He  let  me  go  into  it,  and  wander 
about  at  will.  It  was  very  little,  and  the 
small  rooms  were  very  low.  It  was  plas 
tered  now  ;  it  was  even  papered ;  but  it 
was  not  half  so  fine  as  it  used  to  be. 

Tasked  him  if  there  was  a  graveyard 
on  top  of  the  hill,  and  he  said,  "  Yes ;  an 
old  one ;"  and  we  went  up  together  to 
look  at  it,  with  its  stones  all  fallen  or 
sunken  away,  and  no  memory  of  the 
simple,  harmless  man  and  his  little  chil 
dren  whom  I  haa  seen  laid  there,  going 
down  with  each  into  the  dust  in  terror 
and  desolation  of  spirit.  His  widow  prob 
ably  no  longer  wears  dresses  of  change 
able  silk  ;  and  where  is  the  orphan  boy 
in  the  oil-cloth  cap?  In  Congress,  for  all 
I  know. 

I  looked  across,  t^io  oare  island  to  where 


their  cabin  had  stood,  and  my  eyes  might 
as  well  have  sought  the  cities  of  the 
plain.  The  boy  at  my  elbow  could  not 
make  out  why  the  gray-mustached,  mid 
dle  -  aged  man  should  care,  and  when  I 
attempted  to  tell  him  that  I  had  once 
been  a  boy  of  his  age  there,  and  that  this 
place  had  been  my  home,  the  boy  of  whom 
I  have  here  written  so  freely  seemed  so 
much  less  a  part  of  me  than  the  boy  to 
whom  I  spoke,  that,  upon  the  whole,  I 
had  rather  a  sense  of  imposing  upon  my 
listener. 


THE   END 


14  DAY  USE 


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